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Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Shame As A Necessary Good

Assavros calls on all the Shialeks of the world to come to Syria to exterminate the reviled Sunnimies

Why
Obama fails the leadership test in the Middle East. “The US
"better safe than sorry" approach to the Middle East has proven
dangerous.” Indeed, the Obama administration created more chaos in the
Middle East, but it did so, on the cheap. That’s the nature of its
accomplishment: not less chaos, but cheaper chaos. More importantly perhaps,
contrary to its predecessor, which recognized its fuck ups at one point, owned
up to them, and tried to correct them through the surge, rekindling the Israeli-Palestinian
peace process, and remaining committed to isolating the Assad regime, the Obama
administration seems quite content with its fuckups. Indeed, the administration
and its realist supporters seem committed to seeing wisdom in their folly, and
triumphs in their multiplying defeats, and to congratulating themselves on all
this, right up to the Gates of Hell, and even as they step inside pulling the rest of
us behind them. Talk about ideology. Realism turns out to be the more dangerous
ideology of all.

So, and as stories of "extermination" of detainees and of Russia’s use of cluster munition come out, nothing
will change, because no one in the administration sees a need for change.
What’s happening in Syria is everybody else’s problem, and fault. And it’s
actually good, since it is draining our enemies’ resources, sapping their
energy, and preventing them from shifting their focus elsewhere… and it’s others
that are paying the price for all this. Isn’t amorality wonderful? We can watch other people fuck each other
while we reap the benefit.

As for that possibility that we
might see ourselves one day friendless and surrounded by enemies united in our
hatred, the realists would like to remind us that we have the strongest
military in the world, even when compared with all other armies combined. Well,
that may be, but, doesn’t such facile calculus represent exactly what
hubris is made of?

Be that as it may, and
considering all the above, I can only conclude by saying: Fuck you President Obama
and Secretary Kerry. Fuck you both from all my heart. Personally, I'll never
forget the day when Kerry paid a visit to Bashar Al-Assad in Damascus back in
January 2005, right after his defeat to Bush in the elections, and by way of
trying to undermine Bush’s Syria policy at the time. The series of
interrogations to which I was subjected took place right after this visit, and
were, in a way, a product of it. Assad had been avoiding me up until then, for
fear of antagonizing America. But once reassured that there were powerful
people in the Senate who stood by him, and thought of him as a reformer and an
ally even, my immunity disappeared, and that space for activism which my
family, my colleagues and I have created inside Syria began to shrink
continuously until we were ordered out of the country. Now, the same person is
involved in sealing Syria’s fate, and not only mine, and that of the liberal
democrats. Admittedly, we
were always few, but we were pioneers, we led. And for all the boasting of
leftist and Islamists, this was our revolution to begin with, and we were
betrayed first, and foremost. We had to be. With us out of the way, with few
nonviolence advocates and moderates on the scene, the administration can then
justify the betrayal of the entire country. Where are the moderates? They keep
asking. Right!

Well, again, fuck you sir, and
sir, and all you SOBs who support their policies on Syria. Fuck you all for
being such good and decent folk on so many domestic issues and so
amorally tribal when it comes to certain foreign affairs. Fuck you all for
being so good at compartmentalizing your sense of decency and humanity, for
imposing geographical limitations on them.

To His
Undying Shame!Kerry
'blames opposition' for continued Syria bombing. He also warns them that
rebels will be decimated as Russia intensifies its bombing campaign over the
next three months. So, nothing that the Russians and Iranians are currently
doing in Syria comes as a surprise to the people in the Obama administration,
and none of it seems to meet with their disapproval. At this stage, none of
this is surprising, but every bit of it is still disgusting. What
a shame! What a crying shame!

For A
Little More Shame:Syria:
Assad regime kills so many detainees it amounts to 'extermination' of civilian
population, UN says. “UN investigators called the deaths of those detained by the
regime a crime against humanity.” Russia/Syria:
Daily Cluster Munition Attacks. “Increased Use of Widely Banned Weapon.” The
one line the West keeps repeating about Syria that is helping Assad win the war.
“As the
diplomats called for a peaceful resolution to the crisis… pro-regime
forces were encircling Aleppo — Syria's largest city — aided by heavy
Russian airstrikes that are estimated to have killed
scores of civilians.” But of course none of this means anything.
It’s not the responsibility of the leaders of the most powerful nation on earth
to do anything to stop this, not to mention prevent it when they could.
Because, as history has repeatedly shown, principles and wise-ass utterances
aside, with great power comes great indifference to the suffering of others. For
it’s by caring for others that we become weak.

Go ahead, patronize me!

About Ammar

Ammar Abdulhamid is a Syrian-American author and pro-democracy activist based in Silver Spring, Maryland. He is the founder of the Tharwa Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to democracy promotion. His personal website and entries from his older blogs can be accessed here.

The Delirica

The Delirica is a companion blog to the Daily Digest of Global Delirium meant to highlight certain DDGD items by publishing them as separate posts. Also, the Delirica republishes articles by Ammar that appeared on other sites since 2016. Older articles can be found on Ammar's internet archive: Ammar.World